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High Blood Pressure Can Be A Dangerous Problem For Which There Is Often A Simple Answer
In the last few years alterations to the diet and lifestyle in many western societies have resulted in an increase in the number of individuals suffering from high blood pressure.
High blood pressure (which is otherwise known as hypertension, or more accurately arterial hypertension) can be a serious condition that rarely has any symptoms and that, if left undetected and untreated, can cause stroke, heart attack, heart failure, arterial aneurysm or renal failure - any one of which is a serious life-threatening condition.
So precisely what is hypertension and exactly what causes it?
The arteries within the body are constantly filled with blood that exerts a normal 'background' pressure on the walls of the arteries. When your heart pumps freshly oxygenated blood around your body it forces this blood into the arteries which momentarily raises the pressure on the walls of the arteries with every beat of the heart. These two pressures are called the systolic pressure (the higher pressure as the heart pumps) and the diastolic pressure (the reduced normal or 'background' pressure).
Normal levels of blood pressure vary from person to person but, generally, systolic pressure should be about 120 mm Hg and diastolic pressure should be approximately 80 mm Hg. This is ordinarily shown as a blood pressure of 120/80.
If your blood pressure starts to rise and remains above 120/80 then you are described as being 'prehypertensive' and, although this is not in itself serious, it is an indication that you might be at risk of developing hypertension and all of the problems linked with it. If your blood pressure rises to, and stays at, a level of 140/90 or above you are said to be suffering from hypertension and steps ought to be taken to lower your blood pressure.
But just what makes you blood pressure rise and remain elevated?
Well, there are various factors at play here and to start there is a group over which you have little, if any, control. This group of factors includes a low weight at birth, various genetic factors, some forms of diabetes (particularly type 2 diabetes) and your age (with increasing age our arteries display a tendency to become fibrous and lose their elasticity, resulting in a reduced cross-sectional area for the blood to flow through).
The next group of factors is far more controllable and includes a sedentary lifestyle, large levels of salt and saturated fats in the diet, excess weight, smoking tobacco, alcohol abuse, stress and working in certain occupations such as motorway maintenance or flying.
Most of these factors are of course treatable and, in a lot of cases, a quite simple adjustment to your eating habits and the addition of a little exercise into your daily routine is all that is needed to reverse the problem. However, the difficulty is that, with few, or no, symptoms, the majority of people do not know that they have hypertension to start with.
So how can you cure the problem?
Well, fortunately, the answer to this question is fairly simple. All you have to do is to drop by your doctor's office on a regular basis (about twice a year should be sufficient) and ask him/her to check your blood pressure for you. The whole procedure is pain free, easy and fast and will give you peace of mind and might save your doctor a lot of work, time and expense down the road when you are forced to present yourself at his office once high blood pressure sets in.
If you are not so keen on visiting your doctor then an excellent alternative now is to simply check your own blood pressure at home. A large selection of simple to operate and reasonably inexpensive blood pressure monitors are now available, allowing you to check your own health, as well as the health of of your whole family, in the privacy and comfort of your own home.
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